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Stars and garters above! Isn't it time for a new post? The last one is just so... big now, isn't it? I don't know if even I could take it... ♥
SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI: PERSONA 4 KINK MEME
PART FIVEAs all you charming little anonymous know, in this very post of mine, you can comment anonymously with any pairing from Persona 4 and whatever astoundingly ( Read more... )
SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI: PERSONA 4 KINK MEME
PART FIVEAs all you charming little anonymous know, in this very post of mine, you can comment anonymously with any pairing from Persona 4 and whatever astoundingly ( Read more... )
As the OP outlined above, this is a requested follow-up to No Beginning, No End (in which Dojima is very dead, leaving Souji and Yosuke to take care of Nanako), and Fight For Us Both (in which Yosuke does some stupid things and contracts Apathy Syndrome as a result). OP noted a dangling plot thread from the latter story, and when I went looking into it, I found a whole lot more from both! Which is why this one will feel like a giant ball of yarn. Of dropped plot threads. Because that's what it is. Yaaay~!
1.
???, 2023
It’s been a long time since he’s been here, he thinks.
Either that, or it’s still 2011 - he’s still seventeen, still in high school, still chasing after a murderer and plumbing the depths of the sea of his soul for pieces of himself he hadn’t known had existed until then. But that possibility seems unlikely. As unfocused as his mind is right now, he can catch snippets of memories, stray thoughts and impressions that speak of real experiences he’s had since those days - terror, happiness, pain, comfort, friends, lovers, family. And when he looks across the dark interior of the limousine and sees the small man and the beautiful woman sitting opposite him, his first impression is that it’s been a long time since they’ve last met.
“Welcome back,” says Igor - and he’s smiling, he’s always smiling, but sometimes it looks like a menacing grimace instead of a true smile, and now is one of those times. “We’d begun to worry.”
Souji tries to speak, and can’t. The words come molasses-slow in his mouth, and he can’t get them out before Igor’s speaking over him.
“My apologies for summoning you on such short notice. I had hoped you would eventually find your way back here, but it seems we were waiting in vain. And time grows short, as always.”
Souji looks to the woman in blue. Margaret regards him coolly with piercing yellow eyes that he’s learned to both fear and respect, both in her and in other beings with those same features. She’s kinder than his Shadow ever was, though. Like that omniscient creature, when she looks at him, he feels like she sees absolutely everything - but also, strangely, and perhaps foolishly, like those secrets and faults are safe with her.
“Remember that we are your guides,” she says serenely. “We cannot tell you what to do with your power. We can aid you, prompt you, remind you of your purpose, but in the end, the choice must be yours.”
“I don’t remember making a choice,” says Souji, when at last he catches hold of the thick, slippery words.
“Ahh, but you did,” says Igor. “And what a choice it was! To look away, to let go, to trust that you had gone as far as possible, and done as much as you could. A choice to do nothing is a choice all the same.”
“Then why am I here, if I’ve already made the choice?”
“Because you are a Fool,” says Igor, and Souji bristles indignantly for a moment before he remembers that what his ears hear and what his host intends to say are not the same thing. “Do you understand what that means?”
He nods, though he isn’t sure he needs to. Being inside the Velvet Room feels so much like a dream, and
sometimes he isn’t sure he’s really been there until he leaves and his heart feels heavier somehow, crowded with the presence of yet another newly-surfaced self. Regardless of whether this meeting is really happening, Souji decides to answer - just in case. “Infinity,” he says quietly. “Potential.”
“Correct,” says Igor, and the line of his mouth curves into a wicked smile under the long arc of his nose. “But also emptiness.”
“I’m - I’m not empty.”
Igor’s laughter is a thin, papery, ghastly thing. Souji is polite enough not to flinch. “Certainly not! At least, not entirely, judging by the splendid things you have shown us in this very Room. But every Fool must embark on a journey - and you’ve returned to us because yours was never complete.”
There’s a pang in Souji’s chest at this reminder, the closest thing to physical sensation he’s experienced during this encounter yet. It’s a pain very close to his heart, and one which he does not go a day without feeling. “There were… some people I couldn’t -“
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Souji digs his fingers into the plush seat beneath him, feels it give, weaken, and ripple. All around him, the entire room begins to shift in much the same fashion.
“You were given a great gift,” says Igor, from somewhere that now seems to be very far away. “Use it to find your way forward, while you still can.”
When Souji murmurs in his sleep, Yosuke turns over, curls around him, and holds him until he’s quiet again. Ultimately, the disturbance passes without him waking - and he’s already forgotten his long overdue meeting in the Velvet Room.
March 26, 2023
The sounds of footsteps and clinking glass in the kitchen pierced the cobweb veil of his dreams and dragged him out of sleep, and he might have slipped right back under if the sounds weren’t accompanied by the smell of someone cooking breakfast. In Souji’s opinion, few things were worth getting out of bed early on a Sunday for, but breakfast made by someone else certainly ranked somewhere near the top of that hypothetical list.
He never seemed to wake naturally anymore - always by some external stimulus. Nanako shutting the door on her way to school, Yosuke opening the closet to look for a clean shirt, the phone, the alarm clock, the television, the fire alarm, birds in the tree by their window, the barking of the neighbourhood dogs, the cars on the street below. Breakfast. Sometimes daylight; he loved that specific time of year when getting up for work meant he was rising with the sun, when he’d open his eyes and see the soft glow of cold early morning light streaming in from between the crack in the curtains. A little hopefully, he tilted his head back on his pillow so he could look outside, upside-down, out the window above him - but he was met with disappointment. Grey clouds, grey skies, grey rain. Grey fog.
Souji couldn’t remember the last time he’d been woken by the sun.
He rolled over. The other half of the bed was vacant, Yosuke’s watch and glasses missing from the bedside table. The sheets on his side were cold; he must have been up for a while. Maybe if he stayed there long enough Yosuke would come back to wake him, and then he could pull him back down into bed and they could waste the entire dreary day under the blankets together, like they used to. But that simply wasn’t possible.
They needed to be somewhere today.
Souji got up, got dressed, got moving. In the hall, he stole a glance through the open door of Nanako’s bedroom as he passed, partially packed up in boxes and growing emptier by the day, a sight that never failed to cast a shadow on his mornings. He found her preparing food in the kitchen (he should have known it wasn’t Yosuke; nothing smelled burnt), and she glanced over her shoulder when she heard him approach and greeted him with a subdued, “Morning, big bro.”
“Good morning, Nanako-chan. Sleep well?”
She shrugged and tilted her head a little from side to side, evaluating. “Okay. Woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep, though. So I made breakfast.”
“Yeah, it smells great.” He went to the cupboard and retrieved some plates for themselves as she finished preparing what looked to be small portions of fish. Casually, even though he already knew what the answer would be, he asked, “Where’s Yosuke?”
“Gone already,” answered Nanako, and a troubled little furrow appeared on her forehead as she said it. “I asked him to wait for us, but he wouldn’t. He does this every year...”
“Then why are you always surprised?”
“Because it’s not fair to either of you. You said that girl hated him, and he still goes to see her? Today of all days?”
“Would you want to make more than one trip if you didn’t have to?”
“Still…”
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“Well,” she began, but her angry huff petered out into a sad little, “I need him. I need both of you there with me.”
Souji patted her shoulder reassuringly. “He’ll meet up with us. You know he will.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I know.”
They ate in silence, cleaned up after themselves, and then it was time to face the day. Souji grabbed an umbrella as they headed out the door. It didn’t seem as though it would stop raining anytime soon.
“These are for you, Dad.”
In the back corner of Inaba’s largest graveyard, Souji watched as Nanako crouched low enough to the ground to lay her small bouquet of white flowers carefully at the base of the stone marker they’d come to visit. He didn’t know how many times they’d made this trip together, how many times he’d seen her perform exactly these motions, nor had he ever tried to count. More often than is usual, his parents said; not nearly often enough for him.
Ryotaro Dojima had been his father too, once upon a time. However briefly.
Nanako had another small clutch of flowers grasped tightly in her hands, little yellow ones that Souji had seen growing alongside the Samegawa. She laid these next to the white ones, at the right hand side of the marker just below her mother’s name, and said some words that were too quiet for Souji to overhear - for which he was grateful. This part always felt too private, too personal. Her father’s death six years earlier had been a shared pain, something that had influenced both their lives profoundly, but Souji had never managed to overcome the barrier that prevented him from grieving his aunt Chisato like was allowed of her husband and her daughter. That pain wasn’t for him, and never would be, and through some nearly divine gift of tact, Souji was fully aware of that.
Nanako stood then, flowers at her feet, and stepped backward until she was under the protective barrier of Souji’s large umbrella. He dislodged his free hand from his coat pocket and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and pulled her in close to his side. She used to like it when he did that, during their previous visits, when she was younger and more apt to need his strength as a sibling and as a parent; but although she leaned against him now without complaint, he felt a resistance in her frame that hadn’t been there before.
He told himself not to worry. She’d said not an hour ago that she still needed him and Yosuke, and he was going to cling to that reassurance. It was strange, really. He’d once been terrified of the prospect of someone depending on him so completely, and now, out of everything he’d worried about her, about school and growing up and dating and leaving home, the thing he wasn’t ready for was for her not to need him anymore.
“I never blamed Mom for not being here like I blamed Dad,” she said softly. Souji stared straight ahead at the marker, at the way the rain funnelled down the imperfections in the stone in tiny rivers, and said nothing. Nanako almost never spoke of her mother; he didn’t want to screw up whatever had prompted her to do so now. “Dad didn’t mean to die any more than she did. But I never blamed her like I blamed him. Why?”
“You were younger, then,” said Souji. “You didn’t know.”
“Know what?”
He shrugged. “That parents aren’t perfect. That sometimes they screw up. You were old enough to know that with your dad, so it’s easier to place blame on him.”
Nanako’s shoulders fell slightly, beneath his arm. “That’d be stupid of me,” she said.
“Well,” said Souji, knowingly, “kids aren’t perfect, either.”
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“I want to meet my Persona,” Nanako said calmly. “Before I leave for school.”
“…Are you sure?”
She nodded firmly. “Yeah.”
“There’s no rush, you know,” said Souji. “You’re just going to Iwatodai. It’s not like you’ll never be back.”
“Big bro… I need to put this behind me before I go. I don’t want to take that Shadow with me.”
“Your Shadow’s always with you, Nanako-chan,” he reminded her; it was a hard-earned lesson, and one he needed to be sure he passed on. “It’s a part of you. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
“I know, but…”
“You should listen to your brother, kiddo.”
Souji glanced sidelong down the path between the gravestones to see Yosuke walking toward them, face pale, shoulders hunched against the cold rain, and flowers still tightly clutched in his hand. He looked small like that somehow, almost ill; the word diminished came to Souji’s mind before he hastily dismissed it, angry with himself for even thinking such a thing - as if Yosuke was something lesser now, instead of as whole as he’d always been.
“Besides,” Yosuke continued, stepping out of the rain and under the umbrella with them, “some people just don’t have Personas they can call out at all. Sometimes you just have to accept that living with your Shadow is the best you can do.”
“Yosuke,” Souji warned quietly. Yosuke looked up challengingly, as though he was ready to argue being shut down so brazenly, but he ultimately backed down with a careless shrug.
“I know I might not have one - not like you do, big bro. But my Shadow… she said some awful things. Things that are true, I know that, and I’ve worked really hard to accept them. I just need to know that I really did. I need some kind of proof.”
Souji nodded. “Then I’ll help you find it,” he promised. “We’ll do it together.”
“How?” Yosuke asked. “By taking her to the other side? ’Cause if that’s where you’re going, there’s no way you’re leaving me behind.”
Souji glanced at him, above Nanako’s head, and found Yosuke staring him down with an intensity in his face that had largely been absent for a long time now: daring him to say no. It was a challenge Souji was reluctant to take up, especially at that particular time and place, but he had long ago sworn to himself that he would do everything in his power to protect both Nanako and Yosuke, and he accepted that keeping that promise sometimes wouldn’t be easy - or at all appreciated. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Yosuke,” he said. In the crook of his arm, he felt Nanako cringe in anticipation of what they all knew was about to happen.
As expected, the burning focus that had come into Yosuke’s eyes dissipated in a moment of stunned disbelief, only to be replaced by a wounded and furious glare. “Yeah,” he scoffed, “why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“I’m sorry, but… we almost lost you last year. I’m not willing to risk your safety if I don’t have to.”
“Souji, come on. I could - I could trip down the stairs or get hit by a car or drown in the river, and that’s what you’re worried about?”
“Those are entirely different-”
“No, they’re not, and I’m not letting you two go in there alone,” Yosuke swore. “You’re not going to leave me out of this.”
“If something goes wrong --“
“Then you’re gonna need me, dammit!”
“Guys!” Nanako interrupted. “Not here, okay? Please?”
The two of them looked to her, and then back to each other, irritated expressions now tinged with a mutual guilt that defused the imminent explosion, and an understanding passed between them: they could and probably would have another fight about this, but not in front of Nanako, and not in front of her parents.
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“Let him come with us, big bro,” said Nanako. “You won’t have to fight; I won’t let it get out of control. I promise I’m ready to face it.”
“…I’ll think about it.”
“Now you sound like a dad,” she told him, which earned her a playful tap on the head.
Yosuke deposited his flowers on the Dojima family grave, and then they departed the graveyard together through the fog, talking and making plans for when they should attempt the trip into the other world. When Nanako received a call on her phone from Teddie, who always made it a point to try and cheer her up on this particular day, she walked on ahead to talk privately and left Souji and Yosuke to follow at a distance.
“How was Saki?” Souji asked.
Yosuke shrugged. “Brought her some flowers - the ones from Junes that she used to like.” He laughed, hollowly. “Maybe she was lying about that, too, though.”
“But you didn’t leave them for her?”
“Someone else was there.”
“Who?”
He shook his head. “Don’t know who it was. You remember though? That guy she was planning on running away with? I heard he actually still comes here sometimes to see her. It might have been him. And I thought - god, what the fuck am I doing? I turned her into this martyr, y’know, a reason to do what I’d been doing back then - like she even gave a shit that what I did was for her. I never even thought about the guy she actually cared about for a goddamned second. Anyway, no way I could show my face with someone else there, so I left.”
Souji reached over and touched his arm, let his free hand slide down his wrist and then to his palm until he could twist their fingers together. It was safe to do so, on such a miserably rainy day that was sure to keep curious onlookers at home, and under those circumstances, Yosuke appreciated comforting physical contact quite a great deal. “Look, I’m sorry about before,” said Souji. “I know it must seem like I’m smothering you, but…”
“It kinda does, yeah. I’m not made of glass, man, okay? Just because I can’t dish it as well anymore doesn’t mean I can’t take a hit.”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Yeah,” said Yosuke. “You either, y’know? I’d be out of my mind just sitting around at home waiting for you to get back. Dude, we’ve done this together this whole time, gone the whole way together. Don’t make me sit it out now just because I hit a rut.”
“…Okay,” said Souji. “But I mean it - it’ll be just like the old days, all right? If there’s trouble and I say ‘get out’, then you listen to me and we get out. Got it?”
Yosuke gave his hand a grateful little squeeze. “Got it, partner,” he agreed with a tired but warm smile - a shadow of what it used to be, but disarming as always - and Souji thought for a moment as he returned it that maybe all their arguing as of late was for nothing. Maybe Yosuke would be all right after all.
Still, he watched him carefully as the three of them headed for home, mindful of the dark corners under his eyes and the pallor of his skin, features he had grown somewhat used to over the last several months, but which seemed to be worsening all the same. And he wondered if he was genuinely sure Yosuke would be all right, or if he was just internalizing all those excuses he’d been fed for so long now: Just stressed out, partner, nothing to worry about - I’m not hungry, that’s all - the rain gets me down, you know that - sorry, I didn’t mean to-
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He had been without Susano-O for an entire year now, and Souji feared that the extent of the toll that absence would take on him had yet to be seen.
They went home again, back to their tiny apartment above the barber shop in the shopping district, where Nanako continued packing and Yosuke went back to bed. Souji didn’t join him, in spite of what he’d wanted earlier that morning. He sat at the kitchen table with coffee and yesterday’s newspaper, and skimmed it while he listened to the sounds and the silence of his comfortable life unravelling around him, and wondered how the hell it had happened.
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... oh wait. I can and will later. |D <3 I'm so happy to see you and your story again! Thank you!
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Kind of OT, but have you heard of a musician named lionel Cohen (yes, really spelled that way)? My favorite song of his is called The Scars We Gather, and your title reminded me of that. The song itself kind of fits the three fics, at least in my opinion. :) It can be found here if you're interested: http://www.dna-productions.com/filmmusic/volume1/index.htm. The list randomizes with each page reload for some reason, so heads up.
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I cannot tell you how happy I am to see this. More details later, in the fashion I am...unfortunately known for, but in the mean time? I offer this: <3333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333
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I've been waiting not-quite-patiently for this, and-and-and-and--what a brilliantly awesome first part!! Have I mentioned how much in love I am with your wording? If I haven't, I'm very much in love with it--and with you. And this universe. And whichever bunny it is in your head that produce this universe. *sighs* This--I love every single part of it.
I didn't expect you'd mention Saki, so when I read this, it's like a billion lamps in my head are turned on. Like, "Of course, of course, her death was such a turning point for Yosuke, it's impossible to say that she's not a part of his life anymore even when she's dead." It just makes perfect sense to me. Those simple, small, meaningful fluff between Souji and Yosuke you always manage to throw in prefect situations--I love them too much. It speaks way a lot more about their relationship, and how much they care for each other.
Your Yosuke. I always love your Yosuke so much. Your Yosuke and angst blend so well that--that--that oh I don't even. And how is it that you are able to characterize your Souji with all his perfection and glory, but still makes him looks and sounds so human? So.. normal? And Nanako. I find myself thinking, "Oh, you've grown up!" as I read on, perhaps like a feeling a Mother has when her child has grown up? It's a marvelous feeling to read Nanako growing up to be a strong woman like that, but still retains some of her adorable childish-ness like when she says she needs Yosuke and Souji. This. Anon, I can't ask for more. Now, wait, I still want more, more, and more, and even know I've started to think how sad I'll be when this piece reach its last part. >___<
I really should shut up. I probably didn't even make any sense, I'm sorry. But anon, I'm waiting for more, and still not-quite patiently so. XDDDD This is too amazing for words!
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this is amazingly written as always - i love how you've taken personality traits of souji & yosuke and believably matured them. nanako is just the young woman that i expected her to grow into. what yosuke said hit me the hardest - he may have grown up, but a lot of that bitterness/insecurity is still there.
i can't tell you how happy i am to see more from you. thanks for indulging us and writing more. ♥
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Not so secret: bitter!Yosuke is a favourite Yosuke of mine. 8D; Not sure how Souji has put up with that for so long. :|
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